


A Quiet and Restless Place

by PlumTea



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/pseuds/PlumTea
Summary: The same peace, as it always has been, turns over and over. In Purgatory, Lucifer waits.





	A Quiet and Restless Place

Today, like all other days, Purgatory is peaceful.

There are no people, nobody else but the former Supreme Primarch tending to his garden. He finishes watering the last of the small trees lined up in neat rows, and returns to his small house. The inside is furnished, plain but sparse, enough to indicate that someone has lived there once. Outside, the gazebo is threaded with strands of wisteria hanging down from the roof and columns. In the distance, a large mountain silently looms, surrounded by clouds.

Lucifer pours a cup of coffee for himself, from a pot that is always full, into a cup that is always warm. He takes a sip; warm, even taste, satisfactory.

Such a place is truly paradise. 

* * *

Today is different, and Lucifer has a guest. 

When he comes back from the garden, a shadow is sitting at the gazebo, purple feathers curling over dark leather. Lucifer approaches him slowly, not from caution, but surprise. “Are you—”

“Dead? Nah.” 

“Then are you visiting?”

“Nope. I’m not really here. But you want me to be here, so I look like this now.” Belial gives him a grin that’s all fangs. “Who would’ve ever thought that the perfect Lucifer want to see me again?”

“I’ve never been perfect,” Lucifer sighs softly, but he is used to this. He missed this, in a way. 

Lucifer pours Belial a cup of coffee, the way he remembers Belial liking it: dark with a dash of cream. Belial drinks and doesn't complain. As Lucifer watches the shadows in Belial’s face, he feels a twinge of discomfort. Belial watches everything like he’s ready to pick it apart, and that’s not unusual for him. But here there’s nothing to unearth, there shouldn’t be.

Belial lets out a long yawn, flicking the edge of his cup. “Is this really what happens after death? Boring.”

“It’s peaceful. Don’t you think this place is beautiful?”

“If you ask me, it looks like hell.”

Lucifer blinks. It’s never been a secret that he and Belial shared different tastes, but he knows that Belial can appreciate the peace and quiet at times. “Why?"

“There’s nobody here. There’s nothing to do. You’re really okay, just sitting here like this?”

“I am.”

Belial blinks, then sighs, shaking his head. “You know, I’m not really sure if I ever liked you or not.”

Lucifer remembers dying, bleeding out from a wound in his side that wouldn’t stitch up no matter how hard he willed it. And Belial watching him, not with sadistic joy, just waiting. Waiting for him to finally expire. “But I liked you,” he says back, the truth.

“Yeah, well, you never really disliked anyone.” Belial flicks his cup again, the coffee inside sloshing at the edges. “What did Faa-san see in you? You barely say anything. You never talk, all you do is respond. He really designed you to be as thoughtless as possible.” Belial scoffs to himself. “Well, at least he made you so that you remembered the people lesser than you.”

“You’re not lesser than me.”

Belial flicks the cup hard and it tips onto its side, coffee spilling all over. It runs dark across the white tabletop, into the grooves of the glass and pools around Lucifer’s cup. “You’re into lying now? You know that’s not true, not where it counted.”

But it was true, Lucifer wanted it to be true. He and Belial were born at the same time, with the same amount of power. They were equal at birth, and even if they took different paths, he wanted them to stay— “But even if we chose differently, we…” Lucifer looks down at his own cup, “Even then..."

Belial lets out a dramatic sigh, kicking back in his chair, “Yeah, I get it. I know. I figured out way, way before that you didn't understand."

“Then—”

“But it doesn’t matter.” Belial’s voice is as sharp as the blade that severed his head. “You don’t really understand, and you probably won’t ever will.”

“I can,” he urges, a flame of fight quiet but burning in his chest. “You just had to tell me, and I’d—”

“Lucifer, Lucifer. Even if I told you flat-out, made some nice little charts and gave a whole presentation, it wouldn’t make a single difference in the world. Because I have things I _ want_, enough that I’d do anything to see them happen. Meanwhile, you’ve never wanted anything. So don’t you worry your perfect little head about it. It’s not worth my time.” Belial stands up, yawning as he makes his way out of the gazebo. “Of course you’re having a grand old time in this place. There’s nothing here. Just the way you like it.”

The spilled coffee runs down the table legs, steadily, silently. 

* * *

The leaves of the coffee trees are doing well today. Lucifer wonders when the beans will be ready to harvest. He wonders how they’re growing so well, in a place like this. He wonders if this sunlight is good for the plants. He wonders how there’s sunlight in a place with no sun. 

He wonders why he never thought about it before. 

* * *

Between a layer of trees, there is starlight in the dark, a shadow over his face like a solar eclipse. 

“My—” Lucifer pauses, because even after all that, he still considers Lucilius his, “—friend.”

“Lucifer.” Lucilius gives him something like a smile, the best he’s ever been able to muster. A cut across his mouth, a scalpel’s edge. How wonderfully familiar.

Lucifer remembers that Lucilius doesn’t like coffee, so he finds some tea in the cabinet and prepares that instead. The cabinet never had any tea before, but Lucifer takes it anyway. They sit in silence for some time. Lucilius is like how he was long ago, when they still walked the halls of Canaan together, a peaceful era bygone. His friend is in all whites and gold, but now Lucifer sees there’s a disturbing opaque blackness to him. Maybe it was always there. Maybe he refused to look. 

“You’re not here, are you?” Lucifer says.

“No. I’m not.”

“I see…” A low ache sears his chest. He wanted to see Lucilius again, to know how he’s doing— _how he’s doing? Lucifer knows, Lucifer had made sure— _

“Can I ask you something?”

Lucilius blinks, tilts his head. “You can always ask me anything.”

A lie, a lie. Lucifer’s grip tightens around the handle of his cup. “Why is it desirable that I’d want nothing?”

Lucilius hums, a low rumbling sound. “I will admit, there’s peace in ignorance. When there is nothing, whatever you make of the world can be just that. To be blind is to be eternally unchallenged.”

“Is that why… you designed me that way? How can I be perfect, if that’s how I was made?”

Lucilius smiles, and pulls at the cowl around his neck. “No. You are my greatest creation.” When his fingers pull his high collar down, Lucifer sees it and knows it because he _ did it— _ a slice of flesh. Red meat and flaps of tissue from a sliced larynx, down to ivory bone. “After all, you killed me.”

It was a moment of confusion, of anger, of frustration. His friend was saying something Lucifer didn’t understand but that he knew was dangerous. It was his friend or the world, and he was tasked with the world. So he gripped his sword handle tight and—

Lucifer’s throat is dry, and the shaking sips of coffee don’t help at all. “I didn’t want to do it,” he admits. His fingers ache even now. “I wanted you to live. You were my friend. Why were you so happy when I killed you?”

Lucilius on the floor dying, throat torn, not pleased but not displeased. 

“Because you chose to.” The flesh in Lucilius’ throat wriggles as he laughs. “That wasn’t my order, or anyone’s order. You were always so passive. But you made the decision to kill me. Even if I died for it, you proved me right, that you are the greatest being, with the greatest power and free will.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You do. You’ve always had free will. You just chose not to use it.”

* * *

Once again, he awakens and he begins his day in a place that has no morning or night. A repetition, the same way he’d done it for who knows, as there’s no flow of time. 

A resting place for those burdened with sentience, he’d called it. It was so hard to think, all those years, at the apex, alone. His sword that is no longer at his hip cleaved apart many enemies of the skies. His wings that are no longer on his back shone radiantly of the stars. Like this place now, there was peace across the skies for a long, long time. 

Maybe he was a terrible ruler.

* * *

A garden sanctuary, in a gazebo threaded with ivy and wisteria. A guest that makes his heart stop in his chest, makes his breath go tight. 

Sandalphon gives him a small smile, and Lucifer hurries over, starts to reach for him— but remembers, that Sandalphon wouldn’t come to this place again, not until Sandalphon reaches his own end. It’s far too soon for that. 

He makes two cups of coffee the way they both like it. 

There is no sun overhead, but Lucifer feels a warmth across his shoulders. Sandalphon is not here, but Sandalphon could be here, and so he can find solace once again. No matter what the broken clock says, it feels like it’s been an eternity since they last sat together. "I'm happy to see you again," he says. He does not say that Sandalphon doesn't smell like death. He does not say that even if it would rob Sandalphon of his future, he wants Sandalphon to stay. 

"Are you?" Sandalphon asks. 

"Of course."

"Why?"

"Because," and he is more sure of it than ever before, now that he's had an eternity to think of it, "Because I love you." And without Sandalphon, his body feels so cold, frozen at the edges. Like drowning but never dying. 

"How can you love me if you don’t understand me?”

“Nobody can truly understand each other.”

“But you didn’t even try. You locked me up instead. Cast me out of your sight, threw me away, because you didn’t see how I was hurting. You didn’t want to know.”

Lucifer pushes his toes against the table leg, expecting it to burn him. A crime he is unquestionably guilty of. “Yes. So I had to die. And in death I’ll atone.”

Sandalphon’s frown is cutting. “Is that what this is? Atoning?”

“Yes.” 

_ No. _

“You’re a coward.”

Lucifer smiles sadly. “I can’t defeat death.”

“But you haven’t tried. All you’ve done is sit here.”

“It is… easier. To not think.”

Sandalphon tips the cup to his lips, and once he’s done, he lets out a shuddering breath and stands. “It’s your peace to sit here forever. And it’s my punishment to live forever without you.”

“No.” Lucifer’s voice is soft, nimble at first, but it claws its way to a greater force, “No. Here— you’re not here either. I’m not with you.” Sandalphon had turned away that time, gave him a bright grin, but still left. Left him, and Lucifer had at that moment finally understood how much it ached to be abandoned. “Isn’t that punishment too?”

“Maybe.” Sandalphon gives him a crooked smile, so real that Lucifer doesn’t care whether the boy in front of him is flesh or an illusion. “But I want to see you again. Don’t you also want to...”

_ Yes. _ Yes, more than anything in the whole world and the beyond. Lucifer isn’t sure if it’s even possible, but anything for Sandalphon, his solace, his one and only love. 

He grabs Sandalphon’s arm. “If I come back, will you still be there? Will you—” His breath hitches in his throat, but he blurts out, “—Will you wait for me?”

Sandalphon’s skin reflects golden from the sunlight. “I can’t promise that. Come find out for yourself.” He walks away until he is just a spot between the trees, and then he is gone. 

* * *

Today, like all other days, Purgatory is peaceful.

The mountain in the distance silently looms, always blanketed by clouds. Lucifer waters the plants under the invisible sun. They’re good for harvest soon, sometime. Someone had to build this house, this gazebo, this garden. Maybe another time, there will be someone that lives in this place that doesn’t want to wander anymore. They can harvest the beans then, in this place where nothing changes.

Lucifer drinks his last cup of coffee, and sets out towards the mountain. 


End file.
